A Twin Cities police department received a frantic phone call from a mother just a little after her 11-year-old daughter went missing. The Prior Lake, FL Police utilized CodeRED technology— the premiere high-speed web-based emergency and mass notification system from OnSolve—to send alerts to the neighborhood. Within minutes, teams of neighbors joined the search and two hours after the girl went missing, one of the neighbors spotted her and called the police. Eventually, a firefighter found her and brought her back home. “There’s so much potential with CodeRED technology. The public’s assistance in that can be critical, and it’s a good thing for us,” said Sgt. John Stanger from the Prior Lake Police Department.

“With the global rise in threats and emergencies, implementing mass-notification systems which can notify citizens, regardless of platforms, not only gives people greater visibility and response-options, but also quicker and better resolutions,” says Wain Kellum, CEO of OnSolve. Based in Ormond Beach, FL, OnSolve developed a go-to global communications system for general community and emergency alerts in more than 10,000 communities, used by 100 million people nationwide today. The company helps government organizations and citizens by harnessing the power of mobile technology to alert people in case of emergencies.

With the rapid digital revolution, the government-citizens engagement has evolved over years. In today’s era, the government needs to interact with its citizens on a more personal level. “The need for citizens to gather and gain information and stay up to date on the situational awareness has evolved with technology,” says Troy Harper, General Manager-Public Sector at OnSolve. “We are not building something like a fire extinguisher that hangs on the wall and is used only in case of fire. We empower government and thousands of other communities with an effective communication platform.” CodeRED helps authorized users to send phone calls, text messages, emails, social media messages during emergency situations.

The need for citizens to gather and gain information and stay up to date with enhanced situational awareness, has evolved with technology

Additionally, the OnSolve proprietary mapping interface is embedded within the app which eases the process of locating address, loading new addresses, or selecting a radius around the affected area. OnSolve also houses GIS experts who manage the mapping services.

Armed with an advanced mapping framework, CodeRED’s weather warning system delivers warning immediately following when the National Weather Service issues a bulletin. The system then creates a calling database of all CodeRED weather warning subscribers who fall within the area of the severe weather condition. Unlike county-based alarms, these warnings are more targeted for those who may be affected, increasing relevance and reducing false alarms. Types of alerts include tornado warnings, severe thunderstorm warnings, flash flood warnings, tsunami warnings, and winter storm warnings.

Having acquired two Gartner Magic Quadrant leaders, MIR3 and SendWordNow, OnSolve assists businesses to formulate better disaster recovery planning. While the technology behind MIR3 and SendWordNow is the same as CodeRED, the customer base that both targets are what distinguishes them. MIR3 and SendWordNow cater to corporate clients of all sizes and help to take care of their organizational safety.

While integration through devices remains a major element of the company’s roadmap, the main focus revolves around helping customers optimize through communication and notification systems. The paradigm shift towards cloud in the high-octane IT race is inevitable and OnSolve believes in architecting incredibly secure and reliable cloud-based communication systems.

According to Daniel Graff-Radford, Chief Product Officer for OnSolve, “Our roadmap is laser-focused on helping government and commercial organizations rapidly come up to speed on issues they face, have proven workflows for dealing with those events, and relevant reporting to improve outcomes for the future. This job is made easier by having the best customer you could imagine willing to engage in our planning, more so than any other industry I have been a part of.”